


This train terminates at Edgware

by 8611



Series: Gods and Supervillains [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Backstory, F/M, M/M, Multi, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-11
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 21:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8611/pseuds/8611
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam meets Q on their first day of secondary school, and their story starts from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This train terminates at Edgware

**Author's Note:**

> This will make a lot more sense if you've read [Gods and Supervillains](http://archiveofourown.org/works/582528) first. However, this is A LOT less cracky and way, way more serious. It's also from Adam's POV, so the Q/Moneypenny/Bond takes backseat to Q and Adam's friendship. Also, anything resembling a linear structure starts breaking down about halfway through. 
> 
> [These](http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/L/L02/L02864_10.jpg) are the 2,050 (I think, I went a bit cross-eyed counting) dots. (Anthraquinone-1-Diazonium Chloride, Damien Hirst, 1994.) Pretend that Eve and Q were sleeping together in Gods and Supervillains. 
> 
> Warning for mention of a cancer death (really minor character who dosen't show up on screen).

Q is sitting across from him, drinking coffee, watching people through the wide windows as they hurry down grey sidewalks, because even Paris is grey in November. 

“I think you’ve grown up,” Adam says, and Q shakes his head, smiles softly. 

“That’s a terrifying thought,” Q says, and picks up his mobile to check the time. 

But Adam is getting ahead of himself. 

\---

Here is how their story starts:

It’s September and sunny, and Adam and Q get off the bus together without knowing each other, walk to a new school together without knowing each other, and as they’re waiting in the queue at the door, they finally get to know each other. 

“I’m Adam,” he says, and sticks out a hand stiffly, the way 11-year-olds think they’re supposed to act when they’re trying to be tall and old. 

“Quentin,” Q says, and shakes Adam’s hand a little bit unsurely. Q is tall and thin as a rail and has a completely improbable mop of hair. The glasses he wears through most of secondary are thin wire frames, because the heavy frames will come around in uni. 

(Once again, jumping ahead.)

They take the same bus back home, and get off a stop apart on the same street. Adam laughs and waves back at Q, who offers him a shy smile, a small wave. 

On the second day they know each other Adam calls him Q, and Adam is the first person to call him Q. 

\---

When they’re fifteen (their birthdays are a month and a week apart, so they’re, for the most part, always the same age) Adam learns two very important things about Q. One is because Q tells him, the other is discovered through physical evidence. 

It’s raining, that light, misty rain that London seems to specialize in, and they’re standing in the plaza at Euston with their classmates, waiting while their teacher frantically counts them and recounts them to make sure that everyone had made it out of the Underground alright. Q is staring off into space, something he has a habit of doing during downtime. 

“I got into Glencore's network last night,” Q says, and turns to stare at Adam. Even though he’s under an umbrella there are tiny dots of water on his glasses, and his hair is limp. 

“What?” Adam says, because, at this moment, when they’re fifteen and it’s raining and they’re at Euston, Adam does not know what Q is capable of doing when armed with computer hardware. He’ll learn though. 

“I hacked Glencore's network,” Q says, and frowns at himself, and Adam looks at him like he’s gone mad. 

“What, like _The Matrix_?” It’s just been released, and Neo and Trinity and Morpheus are still adorning the sides of various buses around town. 

“No,” Q huffs, purses his lips. “That’s fake.”

“Obviously,” Adam says, rolls his eyes, and feels like he should be more worried about Q in light of all this, but the thing is, Q is a difficult person to worry about. He always knows exactly what he’s doing, where he’s going, who he’s seeing. Q just knows. Q doesn’t need to be worried about because there’s nothing to be worried about. 

“Just don’t do anything exceptionally stupid,” Adam says, and claps him on the shoulder (Adam is the taller one now) and Q just swallows, nods. 

“I won’t get in trouble.”

(This is a lie, but Adam won’t know that Q gets his job by being presented with an offer from a woman with close cropped, grey hair and the face of a silent storm – prison or the basement of a building in Vauxhall Cross.)

\---

(Move sideways.)

They have a fire going in one of those fire pits you can move about, and they’re sitting across from each other, flames between them, and the fireworks above them have been going since sunset and show no indication of stopping. 

“It’s tomorrow,” Q says, not really to anyone in particular, and he looks skyward as the neighbors send off three quick pops of color and sparks into the sky. 

Adam looks down at his mobile and sees that the time reads _00:01_. It is indeed tomorrow. And today they’ve got the 7:21 to Gare du Nord (calling at Ashford International). 

“You do realize that in less than seven hours we have to be clear across the city?” Adam says, and he knows that even if he goes to bed Q won’t come with him, because Q’s never been great at sleeping when there’s fire in the sky and things to do just after sunrise. Adam doesn’t know if he’s ever actually seen him asleep on Bonfire Night. 

(Rewind, stay on task, back to fifteen.)

\---

The second thing he learns by catching Q kissing Robbie Dunn in the pedestrian passage under Watford Way. It’s a silly little kiss, because they’re still young (although Robbie is a year ahead of them), but Adam has to blink a few times just to make sure he isn’t seeing strange things. 

“Q?” Adam asks, and a gaggle of girls run past them, giggling. It’s late enough that the sidewalks have mostly rolled up, but not quite late enough that the last trains have come through, so that means that the streets are mostly the domain of teenagers at the moment. 

Q turns to look at him, a hand still on Robbie’s arm, and his eyes are wide, and the lights of the tunnel are reflected in his glasses. Robbie just leans in to whisper something in Q’s ear, and Q nods, lets Robbie slip off towards the stairs. Q doesn’t stop looking at Adam the whole time, and when Adam comes over Q shuffles his feet, tucks his hands into his pockets. He’s still wearing his uniform, and Adam wonders if he’s been out all day, they haven’t seen each other since last bell. 

(Adam plays football, Q goes to the library.)

“I understand if you don’t want to-“ Q’s words tumble out in a rush. 

“What, be your friend?” Adam asks, and he’s suddenly angry that Q would even think that. “Sod off, Q, you’re in it for the long haul.”

There is a small smile on Q’s face, and he looks up at Adam, past his glasses. 

“Thanks,” he says. Adam just punches him in the arm, shoulders his footy bag a bit higher, and they walk home together in the dark. 

“You can do better than Robbie,” Adam says when he leaves Q at his front gate. 

“You’ve got to start somewhere,” Q just says, shrugs, and his grin is razor sharp. 

\---

Adam sits law, maths and economics, because he likes to keep everyone on their toes like that. He still decides to take a gap year and firms LSE in August. 

Q, being the little genius that he is, sweeps all three levels (chemistry, statistics, history of art) he sits and decides to go be a computer wizard at KCL. 

He’s the one who sees Adam off at Waterloo, lets Adam give him a stupidly large hug, lets him pick him up a few inches before dropping him back down. 

(They’ll be together in Paris a few years later, but right now Adam is off on his own adventure.)

“Try not to get mugged, or have your kidneys stolen, etc,” Q says. 

“I’ll try my best,” Adam says. “Try not to bring any governments to their knees while I’m gone.”

“I’d never do that,” Q says. 

(This is also a lie, and far from the last.)

Adam goes to Paris, and Vienna, and Rome, and Sofia, and Istanbul. He sends Q photos of Laudere napkins, and slices of sachertorte, and a light up painting of Jesus from St. Peter’s square, and the St. George Rotunda, and a box of kittens tucked into the corner of a doner shop. 

He stands on the Trocedero and makes a wish that he forgets the next day, when he’s getting drunk in an Irish pub around the corner from Père Lachaise with a bunch of rowdy Australians. He goes the opera, sits in an overly plush velvet chair with people around him dressed in finery and listens to music he doesn’t like but can enjoy. He sits on a broken pillar in the Forum and tries to capture the place in words in a little journal he’s brought, although he’s shit at it. He spends too much money at cafes on wide boulevards and goes out at night to see the churches all lit up, beating the oppressive heat that’s been following him since Croatia. He wakes up early, stands at the top of one Istanbul’s many hills, and watches the sun rise over Asia. 

“I’m going there next time,” he tells the cat who’s sitting in the open window next to him, pointing across the Bosporus. The cat stares at him with large eyes and sweeps its tail back and forth. 

(There will be many next times, and he’ll see Mumbai, and Hong Kong, and Auckland.) 

He comes home to London with a tan and an extra bag crammed full of bricka brack and presents Q with a Turkish dagger, even getting down on one knee to do some sort of strange reverse knighting. Q looks delighted in a slightly trigger happy way when he runs his fingers along the blade, and they spend Adam’s first night back giggling because there’s too much rakija in their veins and Adam has enough stories for both of them. 

“I’m glad you’re back,” Q says quietly, when they’re curled up together on Q’s bed because Adam’s much too drunk to get home and his parents are on holiday in Spain anyway. They’re facing each other, and Q’s got his glasses off, tucked away on the bedside table, and Adam wonders, very briefly, if Q was a girl if he’d reach out and kiss him. 

They wake up with horrible headaches and dry mouths and Q’s mother takes pity on them and makes omelets. 

“Learned our lesson about eastern European liquor, boys?” She asks as she dishes up wonderfully hot food. 

“So very much,” Q croaks, and Adam knows that’s a lie, but it’s ok, because he’s grinning behind his hand. 

\---

His memories of Q jump from time to time –

Adam is standing in the hallway of their flat, quiet, and Q’s door is cracked open, and there is a woman in his bed, her back bare. She’s leaning over Q, and he’s got a hand on her side, and the kisses they’re trading are lazy, simple things. 

Someone’s mobile rings, and the woman groans, reaches out with long fingers to snatch the offending device up, sets it down on Q’s chest to scroll through something, an email, a text. 

“Oh good,” she says, “the world is coming down around our ears again.”

“Keep calm and carry on,” Q says, sighs, and he reaches up to kiss her again. 

“C’mon, up,” she says, “this is mostly your problem anyway, something about intel from Mathis.” 

He turns away as she turns towards the door, and he’s not afraid of being caught peeping in on them so much as he’s afraid being caught listening to a conversation that isn’t for him, could never be for him. 

He meets her formally later, when she comes over for dinner and movie night, and Q introduces her as Eve. 

\---

They’re cyclical, circular. Q is 18 and stone cold sober and Adam is 18 and just a little bit drunk. Q is lying on his stomach and there’s a man with a gun, and it buzzes in his gloved hands as he tattoos 2,050 dots on Q’s back. 

(He’d asked – _how many_ – and Q had answered, his voice smoky in the cold, _2,050_.)

They rest just above the rise of his hips, across his spine and lower back, and Q tells him about standing in a room of Rothkos at the Tate and then sitting on the river with a girl he’d taken on a date once (she was the one with long, perfectly straight brown hair, Adam remembers her, he’d gone to her Bat Mitzva).

“Do you ever miss her?” 

“Who, Lea?”

“Yeah.”

“No, I don’t miss anyone who I’ve dated.” 

(Adam wouldn’t call Q’s usual MO dating.)

“Fucked?”

“Or fucked.”

It takes long enough that Adam sobers up and they have to take a night bus home. They stand under a street light smoking and waiting for the bus, and Adam lets Q lean on him, lets Q nose against his neck because Q’s tactile. Adam has thought, once or twice, about letting Q fuck him, but Adam knows that Q doesn’t see those people again, and Adam isn’t losing Q like that. 

(Later, they’re adults with jobs, and they’re drunk, and Adam asks him and Q shakes his head, _you’ve always been there, I wouldn’t ever even ask you._ )

They get the front seats at the top of the bus, because of course no one is around, and Q sits ramrod straight, away from the back of the seat, and Adam knows his back is going to be sore for days. 

“Worth it?” Adam asks, and Q smirks. 

Adam knows it’s worth it because Q never puts anything else on his skin like that, because he managed to find what he wanted on the first try. 

\---

Q’s dad dies when they’re 20. Adam finds him on the roof with a pair of headphones and a cigarette, and Adam knows he’s been up here for a while. The last few months Q has been cutting back (it wasn’t lung cancer, but it was still cancer), but now there are cigarette butts scattered on the roof and there’s an empty pack next to Q. 

Adam pulls Q’s headphones off, and Q doesn’t stop him, lets him leave them around his neck. Whatever music he’s listening to sounds tinny, and Adam thinks it might be Sigur Rós because Q tends to gets all ice queen on life when Something Happens. 

They don’t talk until Q’s finished his last cigarette, and he flicks this one away with quick fingers, over the edge of the building. 

“Don’t say you’re sorry, or that it’s alright,” Q says. 

“Ok,” Adam says, because he’d never try to say that to Q anyway.

Instead Adam just gathers up all of Q’s scattered pieces in his arms and Q lets Adam rest his chin on the top of his head. It’s warm, and the sun is up late, and it’s easy to trace invisible patterns on Q’s bare arms. 

“Will you come to the funeral?” Q asks finally, sounding very small. 

“Of course,” Adam says, because he never thought about _not_ going. 

Adam expects Q to get drunk that night, but instead he sits on the couch with his laptop and doesn’t speak much, just types. Adam plays Halo for a few hours, but once it’s on the wrong side of midnight he gives up, leaves Q to his computer. 

(Adam does not know this, of course, but that night there’s a security breach in the SIS servers.)

\---

There is a man in his kitchen wearing nothing but a pair of very nice trousers (although now rather wrinkled) and staring at the kettle like it contains the answers to life’s mysteries. Adam knows immediately why the man is in the kitchen when he sees the scratch marks around his hips, disappearing across his back. 

He’s fit, this one of Q’s, and looks like he’s gone a few rounds with the wrong kind of people. He’s not Q’s usual type, starting with the fact that Q never goes for anyone older than himself. 

(Except for Eve, but Eve is only the second person to have ever stuck around longer than a night or two.)

The man looks up when Adam stalls in the door to the kitchen, squinting at him in sleepy confusion. All Adam wants is a banana and then to go on his morning run, and there’s this brick wall of a man standing between him and the fruit basket. 

“You’re the flatmate,” he says, points at Adam. 

“Adam,” Adam corrects. “The Flatmate is my surname.” 

The man just smiles, shaking his head. 

(Adam doesn’t know, but Bond is realizing that The/From X is a common trope around the Q-Adam household.)

“I know that everyone thinks our kettle holds the answer to the universe, but I need breakfast,” Adam says, and the man lets him pass, collect a banana, and then eat it as he digs his trainers out from under his bed.

The man – Bond – is still there when he gets back. He teaches him how to play Xbox. Adam knows that Q must be keeping this one too, then.

\---

Q actually dates someone the year after uni, takes them out to dinner and everything. Her name is Sam and she’s got short cropped hair and calls Q a capitalist and a philistine and it just makes Q laugh. 

(Her eyes are always warm, and there’s no bite to her words, even though she keeps a pocket-sized book of Childe in her bag at all times, like she’s waiting for a spontaneous Marxist rally.)

Sam makes Q relax, and between her and this mystery new job that’s put Q in proper office wear Adam watches something in Q click, change. He loses the tragus and some of the skinny jeans and wears Oxfords and peg rolled trousers that make his ankles look impossibly thin. 

To celebrate Adam graduating and getting a job with a proper brokerage they go to Paris for the weekend, and without Sam there (she’d gone to visit her mum up north) it is just the two of them, no girls or boys or course work or things that have followed Q home from the office. 

They haven’t slept together for years, but it’s a habit that’s easy to slip back into for just two nights, curled around each other like they did as teenagers. Adam wakes up with his face pressed into Q’s infamous mop of hair (he’s kept the cut pretty much their whole friendship), and he smiles, stays still for a moment before he rolls over, forces himself to sit up, and is cracking his spine when Q turns his head to look at him, sleep still hovering in his eyes. 

“Now it’s cold,” Q mutters, trying to tug the duvet up, covering up the top of his tattoo, and Adam laughs, and, in the sprit of acting like they did at 16, rips the duvet off the bed in one fluid moment. 

“Oh, you _asshole_ ,” Q says fiercely, and for one moment Adam thinks that Q is going to complete the picture and tackle him for the first time in what’s got to be four or five years, but instead Q just dials up the glare and goes to find clothes. 

They end up at a coffeeshop, and Q watches the grey river and people outside the windows.

“I think you’ve grown up,” Adam says. 

“That’s a terrifying thought,” Q says. 

\---

He has to revise things in his head –

The woman in Q’s bed is Eve. The man in a staring contest with the kettle is Bond. The person standing on the roof in nothing but a pair of shorts (god, it’s hot) with multi-color dots resting evenly on his lower back is an adult, and the cigarette he’s smoking is the first of the day even though the sun is going down. 

The boy in the tunnel is Q’s first kiss. The girl with the cropped hair is his first girlfriend. Eve and Bond aren’t a particular _thing_ or _label_ , they just are, and Adam is glad because Q needs people. Q has just had his mum and dad ( _used to have_ ) and Adam for most of his life, and now he’s got these two new individuals with sharp eyes and wicked smiles. (Adam thinks that although Eve and Bond aren’t cut from the same cloth, they’ve been stitched up in the same places, the same way.)

He has to organize things in his head –

Q and Eve and Bond work together, and he knows now that it’s probably not a logistics company. Adam wonders about that some nights, but then Emily will tell him he’s thinking too loudly and that Q is probably just a secret ninja assassin or something and to let it go. 

Adam lets it go. Q’s got his own life, he has his own secrets. 

\---

Here – 

They get off the bus together, they get back on it together. Q is at his Bar Mitzvah and Adam is around for Q’s first cigarette (and isn’t that a hilarious image to keep close, and Adam knows Q feels similarly about the Bar Mitzvah Shenanigans) and they share a bed at 13 because it seems right and it becomes a habit. Q will stay over some nights, Adam will sneak through Q’s window other nights. 

(17 and traveling, 17 and drunk, 18 and courses and a promise of a degree and Adam feels like an adult. 24 and Emily looks like the future and he knows he’s grown up.)

Q tells him one night, when they’re close in the dark and neither can sleep –

“I think I’m going to get into trouble one day,” and Adam assumes that this has to do with the tattoo that happens two nights later. 

Sam kisses Q in the snow outside their flat while Adam and a girlfriend who doesn’t matter (she’s not Emily) attempt to pelt them with snowballs that are just a bit too wet to fly properly.

(Adam meets Emily at Wasabi on lunch because Q has ditched him due to ‘work reasons’.)

Somehow they get to 28 before Adam walks in on Q in any incriminating positions, which is really quite shocking if Adam thinks about it, and then he finds Q on the counter and Bond between his legs and that becomes the Kitchen-Bond Shenanigan. (Their naming scheme hasn’t really changed over the years.)

Q asks Eve about it one day, why she’s ok with it, and she just leans back, and there’s that wicked smile, and he knows then that it’s not Q and Bond, and Q and Eve, but all three of them. 

“It’s just not fair,” Adam amends. “He gets all you pretty people.” Eve's laugh sounds like summer. 

Q is sitting on the coffee table and Eve’s feet are tucked up under her on the sofa and she’s got cuts and burns across her neck and down her bare shoulder and Bond is leaning back with a compress on his chest (it’s red with too much blood). Adam nearly drops his groceries when Q turns around and he looks like a storm and there’s a slash across his lips and down his chin and there’s blood on his face and on his hands. 

(Adam gets down on one knee and does things properly, and Emily says yes, because of course she says yes, because she’s so perfect she makes Adam’s teeth hurt. 

“She said yes,” Adam says, and Q grins, offers him a toast with his mug. 

“I think you’ve finally grown up,” Q says, and Adam laughs.)

Eve and Bond are bleeding and burnt and Q is supposed to be in Hong Kong, and for a moment no one speaks. Q looks back at Eve and Bond for a heartbeat and then Eve gives the tiniest of nods, and it’s all the permission Q needs to turn back to Adam. 

“I think I owe you a story,” Q says. 

“Start at the beginning,” Adam says.


End file.
